Re: Yismekhu or Yismechu

[I. Oppenheim <i.oppenheim...>]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, r l reid wrote:

> final Tehilah (Psalm)

Hebrew is a tricky language. While the plural is indeed
"tehilim" (psalms), the corresponding singular that is
normally used is "mizmor" (psalm). Just as the
normal singular of "anashim" (men) happens to be "ish"
(man) and not "enosh" (man), what one would have
expected.

> My point (and I *think* I have one) is that asking
> how many melodies there are for a bit of liturgy is a
> doomed question.

Well, that's a bit too strong. While there may be
countless tunes around for a certain bit of liturgy,
there will be only a few melodies that are reasonably
well known.

While there indeed have been composed hundreds of
different tunes for Lekhah Dodi, my guess is there are
just three of them that are universally known in the
Ashkenazi world.

So it's still valid to ask how many reasonably
well-known tunes there are for a certain piece of text.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 i(dot)oppenheim (at) xs4all(dot)nl
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/

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